Getting started on the new year

Adam Myerson
04/DEC/2001

http://www.bike.com/features/training/articles/2001-1-4.html

In the decade I spent racing full-time and in the past few years I’ve worked as a coach, the month of January has always stood out as the most dynamic, and perhaps most important of the season. In normal winters I would have a week or two off at the holidays to recover from cyclo-cross season and head somewhere warm for road racing in February. Some years I went to Europe after 'cross nationals and raced another 6 weeks of ‘cross without a break.

Now I'm a year-round New Englander and plan to spend the next month Nordic skiing before I begin structured bike training. Wherever you live, there's something about the winter solstice passing and days getting longer in January that says it's time to get serious. Serious can mean different things to different people, so before you throw a leg over the bike, you've got to decide what exactly it is you're going to get serious about. You need to have a plan.

Designing your winter training plan is like building a bridge. You know where you are now, and you know where you want to be once the racing season starts. You need to come up with the infrastructure that's going to let you cross that gap. We can start that construction process by focusing on the endpoints first. Where exactly are you right now, and where exactly do you want to be?

Where you are now can vary dramatically depending where you live and when you stopped racing. For some, the road or mountain bike season might have ended in September or October, and you may not have touched the bike since. Others may have taken a short break and then started an off-season period of easy riding and perhaps some time in the gym. More and more of you likely had a full season of cyclo-cross that kept you very fit all fall – perhaps with a peak for Nationals in mid-December – followed by the past few weeks completely off. However you got here, it's important to make a separation between what you've been doing, and what you're about to start. Look back at your past 3 months of training, evaluate your progress and put parentheses around the completed phase. You want to view the period a whole and make a clean break.

Next, look across the gorge and decide just how large that span is. Consider your local, regional, or national racing calendar and ask yourself a couple of important questions, working backwards: When do I want to peak and be in top form? When can I start racing? When will the weather allow me to train outdoors? With the answers to those questions you can answer the most important one: how many weeks do I have between now and these points?

Let's assume that no matter what you've been doing this fall, you're starting your new program in early January. Perhaps where you live, training outdoors on your bike will be difficult this time of year. Your racing season begins with training races in March, more important races in April, and you want to peak for a series of criteriums in May or perhaps a stage race in June. With this we've got the general outline of the structure we want to build, and now it's time to pour some concrete.

This plan gives the basic data to build a blueprint for passage from darkest winter to spring and summer fitness. There's obviously still much to consider: what do I do each day, how long should my workouts be, what should my intervals look like, what gearing should I use, etc. With this plan you can at least view each segment of your season's training, and with future articles we will guide you through the training – and racing – to come.

Adam Hodges Myerson is a cycling coach, race promoter, team manager, and USCF category 1. His company is called Cycle-Smart, and he can be reached at amyerson@aol.com. He lives in Northampton, Mass. with his wife, Allison, and their two cats Birdie and Marie.